AHMEDINEJAD ON “TOUGH” SANCTIONS…THEY ARE LIKE USED HANKIES AND PESKY FLIES
Ahmadinejad Compares Sanctions to Used Handkerchief  [Daniel Foster]
The regime in Tehran had harsh words for the U.N. today, vowing that the passage of a new set of economic sanctions will not deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions “even for a second.”
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said resolutions such as the one passed by the U.N. Security Council today “have no value…it is like a used handkerchief that should be thrown in the waste bin.”
“Sanctions are falling on us from the left and the right. For us they are the same as pesky flies.…We have patience and we will endure throughout all of this.”
In Vienna, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s chief nuclear representative to the U.N., said “we will continue without any interruption our enrichment activities…[they] will not be suspended, even for a second.”
The Iranian parliament is also reportedly reconsidering its cooperation with the U.N. on nuclear matters.
More here.
TEHRAN/DUSHANBE (Reuters) – Iran dismissed new U.N. sanctions on Wednesday as “valueless,” vowed to continue its nuclear work and warned it may reduce cooperation with the United Nations nuclear agency.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said during a visit to Tajikistan: “these (U.N.) resolutions have no value…it is like a used handkerchief that should be thrown in the waste bin.”
“Sanctions are falling on us from the left and the right. For us they are the same as pesky flies…We have patience and we will endure throughout all of this,” he said in comments in Farsi translated into Russian.
Iran says its nuclear programme is for producing electricity and other peaceful uses and has repeatedly refused to bow to international pressure to halt uranium enrichment, which can provide fuel for power plants and material for arms if refined much further.
In Vienna, Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) described the U.N. vote as “another dark chapter of mistakes, miscalculations” and said he hoped the major powers would reconsider their “mistakes.”
Ali Asghar Soltanieh added: “We will continue without any interruption our enrichment activities …(they) will not be suspended, even for a second.”
In Tehran, a senior lawmaker said Iranian MPs would review the level of the Islamic Republic’s cooperation with the IAEA.
Iran’s parliament has the power to oblige the government to change its cooperation with the IAEA, as it did in 2006 after the Vienna-based agency voted to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council.
“The parliament will review Iran’s cooperation level with the agency as an extra-urgent matter,” Alaeddin Boroujerdi was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the Security Council had damaged its position by approving the fourth round of sanctions against Iran since 2006.
“The Security Council has damaged its perspective, its position by themselves. The United States, Russia, China should answer to public international opinion why they have taken such a position,” Mottaki told reporters in Dublin.
“Iran’s nuclear is peaceful, we are against (a) nuclear bomb,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Sylvia Westall and Fredrik Dahl in Vienna; Marie-Louise Gumuchian in Dublin)
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